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South Korean president vows to 'punish' ferry culprits as she meets relatives

Park Geun-hye, right, meets a relative of a missing passenger of the Sewol ferry. Photo: Reuters

Seoul: South Korean President Park Geun-hye has met relatives of passengers still missing after the sinking of the Sewol ferry, vowing that any culprits will be "sternly punished".

The disaster's confirmed death toll has risen to 244. Eight more bodies were recovered on Sunday, 18 days after the 6825-tonne Sewol capsized and sank with 476 people on board - most of them schoolchildren - while 58 remain unaccounted for.

"Anyone responsible for the accident and criminally at fault will be sternly punished," Ms Park said during a meeting with relatives camped on Jindo, the nearest island to the wreck where search operations are centred.

A Buddhist monk prays for victims at a group memorial altar in Ansan, south of Seoul. Photo: AP

"I feel a sense of unlimited responsibility... It is heart-rending to imagine how you are feeling," she said, according to a pool report.

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Television footage showed Ms Park, who was visiting Jindo for the second time since the ferry sank on April 16, inspecting a tented village set up in the harbour to manage the process of identifying recovered bodies.

The meeting comes days after she apologised for her government's failure to combat systemic and regulatory "evils" that may have contributed to the accident and her comments reiterated an earlier promise to hold those responsible accountable.

The South Korean President meets a diver at the site where the Sewol ferry sank near Jindo. Photo: AP

The ferry sinking is one of South Korea's worst peacetime disasters, made all the more shocking by the loss of so many young lives.

Of those on board, 325 were students from the same high school in Ansan city, just south of Seoul.

Public anger has focused on the captain and 14 of his crew who abandoned the ship while hundreds were trapped inside.

But criticism has also been directed at the government, as more evidence emerges of lax safety standards and possible corruption among state regulators. Some victims' families have rejected Ms Park's apology.

Dive teams have been struggling to gain access to blocked cabins of the submerged ferry, with the search hampered by fast currents and high waves.

Divers have had to grope their way down guiding ropes to the sunken ship, struggling through narrow passageways and rooms littered with floating debris in silty water.

As days go by, personal belongings and other items from the ship have been spotted further and further away, fuelling concerns that some victims of the ferry disaster may never be found.

One body was retrieved on Friday by a fishing vessel four kilometres away from the recovery site, and another was found two kilometres away on Wednesday.

As a precaution, recovery workers have put rings of netting around the site.

Bedding materials from the ship were found as far as 30 kilometres from the disaster site on Friday.

The Sewol's regular captain, who was off duty on the day of the accident, has told prosecutors that the ferry operator - Chonghaejin Marine Co - "brushed aside" repeated warnings that the 20-year-old ship had stability issues following a renovation in 2012.

Two Chonghaejin officials were arrested last week and another on Sunday on charges of having the ferry overloaded well beyond its legal limit.